Here is a new song, sung and played spontaneously on Friday: Badonkadonk.mp3. That’s Chris on drums.

In other news,

After two weeks of playing near daily barefoot basketball, my knees began to hurt. I seemed to have jolted them pretty hard, and they felt thick and tender. While this didn’t stop me from playing, I realized I needed support. After contaminating a borrowed pair of Nikes from the office, I knew that they would help. After walking around either barefoot or in clogs, I had forgotten how cushioned athletic shoes feel. Nice, soft and warm. It is like sticking my foot in a fresh baked loaf of bread. On Saturday, I took a drive to the Nike employee store in Beaverton. Inside the warehouse-sized building, a frenzied mob of people was browsing the half-priced products. It was an unpleasant atmosphere, both frantic and desperate. It may be life-wrenching to be an employee there. But I did score a ridiculous pair of basketball shoes. If Judge Dread played basketball in a Tron simulation chamber, he too would wear these badass mammajammas: The best part of the trip involved the drive through the woods over the hill into Beaverton. Through it quickly becomes sad as the forest and farm land transitions into the same soulless suburbia you find anywhere.

Today J. and I rode on my scooter down the Sellwood. There was a nice floating pier over the Willamette that had a sunny view of kids playing in the river, the Sellwood bridge, pleasure craft in the water, and downtown in the distance. The pier buckled and swayed in the waves like a waterbed and was relaxing to lie on.Sellwood bridge.View of distant downtown Portland from the dock.A bug on the pier that was crawling out of its old skin. It took well over forty-five minutes to escape, flying away as we left.

From the pier, we continued across the bridge and south on Riverside drive to Lake Oswego. The town and lake aren’t very special. It seemed overly clean and suburban down there, almost unreal. We drove around what we thought was the whole lake. It felt a lot smaller than it appeared on the map, in part because we only drove around only a tenth of it. This was discovered when I looked at the map once we got home.

On the way home, we stopped for ice-cream at the waterfront to the south of downtown. This area is getting developed rapidly with shops and towering luxury condos. I hope the area is successful as it has the potential to be another eye-sore like the revitalized Pearl District where I work. At least the Pearl had old buildings to work with. The South Waterfront area is largely starting from scratch. With no history to build on, it will have to try to try that much harder to find its own. Oddly enough, they are building an aerial tram between the waterfront and OHS University/hospital pictured on the hillside.Crane towering over the banks of the Willamette. Portland: a city on the grow!Saturday’s route is in blue. Sunday’s route in red.